This is foolishness to us Protestants; and not of great importance anyway.  Whether people’s gratitude for the good gifts that come to them be wisely conceived or dutifully expressed, is a secondary matter, after all, so long as they feel gratitude.  The true ignorance is when a man does not know that he has received a good gift, or begins to imagine that he has got it for himself.  The self-made man is the funniest windbag after all!  There is a marked difference between decreeing light in chaos, and lighting the gas in a metropolitan back-parlour with a box of patent matches; and do what we will, there is always something made to our hand, if it were only our fingers.

But there was something worse than foolishness placarded in Creil Church.  The Association of the Living Rosary (of which I had never previously heard) is responsible for that.  This Association was founded, according to the printed advertisement, by a brief of Pope Gregory Sixteenth, on the 17th of January 1832:  according to a coloured bas-relief, it seems to have been founded, sometime other, by the Virgin giving one rosary to Saint Dominic, and the Infant Saviour giving another to Saint Catharine of Siena.  Pope Gregory is not so imposing, but he is nearer hand.  I could not distinctly make out whether the Association was entirely devotional, or had an eye to good works; at least it is highly organised:  the names of fourteen matrons and misses were filled in for each week of the month as associates, with one other, generally a married woman, at the top for zelatrice:  the leader of the band.  Indulgences, plenary and partial, follow on the performance of the duties of the Association.  ’The partial indulgences are attached to the recitation of the rosary.’  On ’the recitation of the required dizaine,’ a partial indulgence promptly follows.  When people serve the kingdom of heaven with a pass-book in their hands, I should always be afraid lest they should carry the same commercial spirit into their dealings with their fellow-men, which would make a sad and sordid business of this life.

There is one more article, however, of happier import.  ’All these indulgences,’ it appeared, ‘are applicable to souls in purgatory.’  For God’s sake, ye ladies of Creil, apply them all to the souls in purgatory without delay!  Burns would take no hire for his last songs, preferring to serve his country out of unmixed love.  Suppose you were to imitate the exciseman, mesdames, and even if the souls in purgatory were not greatly bettered, some souls in Creil upon the Oise would find themselves none the worse either here or hereafter.